Madelyn Wolfe

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To implement something such as a social media strategy is to put it into effect and begin using it in your business. The company I worked with for the client project is the Capital Area Humane Society in Lansing, a business that I’m familiar with because the majority of pets I’ve had throughout my life have been adopted from there. 

Possible Obstacles

The biggest challenge that the company may face with implementing my recommendations is keeping up with posting in a consistent pattern, as that was their biggest issue before. Posting more consistently will help boost their engagement on their platforms as well, and their audience will grow as well, so it’s a very beneficial practice. Their content itself was already engaging to their existing audience, it’s just a matter of posting consistently.

Conclusion

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Effective content from businesses should achieve a number of things, such as actively engage their audience on every platform that’s posted on, and monitoring their Insights to gain an understanding of what their following responds to the most. Planning posts ahead of time through the use of a content calendar can also be very helpful, as it can help the business track the frequency and the type of posts they’re creating on each platorm. An example of a company with an efficient content strategy is Cashapp- they often engage with their audience in different ways, like interacting with their audience through the wildly popular game Animal Crossing. They often participate in giveaways through Twitter as well, and their audience replies to their Tweets with their personal Cashapp handles to be selected. 

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Social Organizations & Effective Content 

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Businesses are able to build their own online communities through social media that are able to be used for a number of purposes, such as gaining feedback from your products or other aspects of your business. These online communities are also very beneficial because the followers are able to connect with one another on their shared interest in the business. Effective principles regarding these online communities, as discussed in the book The Social Organization: How to Use Social Media to Tap the Collective Genius of Your Customers and Employees by Bradley and McDonald, include learning how they are and aren't suitable to be used. A great example of how businesses can utilize their online communities is with Electronic Arts, a gaming company that creates the extremely popular Sims games. When creating new content for The Sims 4, such as expansion or stuff packs, EA asks their online community to vote on a number of ideas that they’ve come up with in order to see what their consumers would want to see next. This is really useful so that they can get direct feedback and gain an understanding on what their audience wants, rather than only putting out content they’ve decided on alone.

Hootsuite Module 4

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Big data, which is described as volumes of collected data, can be both a powerful but dangerous tool, if it falls into the wrong hands. The security of big data can be problematic, as hackers have been able to access consumers’ data that’s stored by businesses. 

Businesses & Big Data

Businesses collect data from their customers and store all of it, meaning that they store millions upon millions of pieces of data. One example in which a business’s data was hacked that Doug LaLone discusses in his lecture is Target, where around 740 million data records were exposed. This can deeply hurt businesses and their relationship with their customers, because the customers will lose trust in the business. It’s crucial that customers are able to trust the companies that they purchase from because if there’s no trust, they’ll choose to do business with other businesses instead. 

Consumers & Big Data

Consumer data is collected by nearly every business that they visit, including e-mail, address, phone number, and even their purchase history. It’s important that we, as the consumers, are aware of how we can protect our data, including solutions I’ll discuss later in my post. At times, we may even be unaware of what data of ours is accessible on online websites such as Facebook, which is scary to think about. We like to think that we’re in control when it comes to our private information, but that may not always be the case.

Possible Solutions

The article “Three reasons junk news spreads so quickly across social media”, published by the Oxford Internet Institute, discusses how algorithms, advertisements and exposure are the three key explanations as to how junk news is able to spread throughout social media platforms at such a fast rate.

Algorithms

Each one of our social media feeds are designed by algorithms- the article describes our social media feed and our Google search results as the “product of calculations”, and they push out certain content meant to be tailored for us specifically. This creates a more personalized experience as we browse our feeds, and also sometimes means that we’ll see more or less of certain users’ content. This reminds me of my personal experience using Instagram. I noticed that the more that I interacted with a certain user’s posts, including liking or commenting, I tended to see their posts more often; on the other hand, I tended to not see posts from users that I did not interact with often. Algorithms, and the calculations that they’re made up of, play a huge role in what we view while browsing online.

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Advertisements

The way advertising works is that social media sites sell our data as a way to make a profit; so, although it seems that the site is free, in reality we’re sacrificing some of our personal data. This led to a huge increase in the use of clickbait, which uses shocking or graphic images or titles in order to gain more clicks onto a link. Advertising also can be tailored to each user, which is how we can see ads for something that we’ve recently searched or shopped for online. Personally, seeing clickbait online always annoys me, because most of the time it’s easy to tell that the title is exaggerated and untrue. Ads also play a role in politics, as political candidates use them to showcase their campaign and may also use them to portray their opponents in a negative way. 

Exposure

A large part of what we are exposed to online is due to the other users and pages that we follow online. Each user posts about different topics, meaning that your personal social media feed will be different from other users on the same site. This means that every individual has a personalized experience while online, and may not see certain information that is on other user’s feeds. 

Raising Our Awareness

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Being a good social media consultant requires certain traits in order to ensure that the company you’re working for is well-represented. Traits such as professionalism and punctuality are especially important as a social media consultant because you’ll be working closely with a company, and will most likely be given deadlines to complete tasks. You want to represent yourself well, and want to do good work for the client so that they may hire you again in the future or refer other companies to you. Another beneficial trait to possess as a social media consultant is to be a good listener so that you’re able to fully understand what your client is looking to work on for their online presence. Being a good listener will help you create better connections with your clients, and create better outcomes as well. 

If I Were a Social Media Consultant

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Watching the segment by 60 Minutes titled “The Data Brokers: Selling your Personal Information”, as well as watching this week’s lecture, helped me learn a lot about big data and what it is. Big data describes a large amount of complex data sets, and it is a powerful tool because it’s able to be collected by and sold to a third party. Data brokers are generally the ones that sell our personal information that’s found online to other companies, or even to the government.  Something that was especially concerning was learning just how personal of information was out there, most likely not even to our knowledge. As stated in the 60 Minutes segment, information such as having a past of alcoholism, sexually transmitted diseases, and also having debt problems are just a few types of private information that may be held online without the user knowing. However, there are steps that we can all take to protect our own data, such as checking our privacy settings on apps and seeing what type of data we’re allowing these sites to access. 

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For my social media experiment, I decided to stay off both social media and my phone in general for the entirety of Saturday the 4th. For the entire day, from when I woke up to when I fell asleep, I avoided using my phone as much as possible, and instead tried to focus on other activities. In my post, I’ll discuss how I spent my social media free day, and how it impacted how I plan on using social media, and technology, in the future.

My Day Without My Phone

My morning was a lot different without my phone, because I usually begin my day by scrolling through different apps to see what I missed overnight. Without my phone, I got up a lot more quickly than usual because I wasn’t distracted. I usually watch Youtube videos or scroll through Twitter while I eat, so it was strange not doing either of those things. I talked to my mom for awhile after having breakfast, which was one of the first technology-free interactions I had during my day. It was really refreshing to have a conversation while I’m not thinking about something that I’m reading online at the same time, which is something that I didn’t realize how frequently I do. One slight issue I came across was when I was going to the grocery store- I initially wasn't going to bring my phone at all, but my mom asked me to in case of emergency. It made me think about how necessary technology is in certain ways, like contacting other people if there are any kind of accidents. I was in a pretty minor car accident a few years ago, and am so grateful that I had my phone in that moment so I could call my parents to tell them what was happening. Going back to discuss my day, going to the grocery store was interesting because I had to use a standard paper and pencil to create my grocery shopping list, when I usually use my iPhone’s notes app. In the evening, I watched a film for another class, and then began working on an assignment on my laptop. I found I was a lot more productive while working, because I wouldn’t get distracted by my phone as I usually do all the time. When going to bed, I usually stay up way too late going through social media, but I was able to go to sleep at a somewhat reasonable time because I wasn’t distracted by my phone.

Final Thoughts

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The way that technology has evolved throughout the past ten years has really normalized social media use. Social media is involved in all of our lives in one way or another, whether we use it directly or hear about it from the people around us. However, because of how much social media is consumed, it makes it harder to take a step back and really analyze how its use is impacting us directly- something I didn’t do often until I watched “We’ve Been Sneaking Into Your Brains”, a talk by Max Stossel that focuses on the negative impacts that come with social media. One key point Stossel made during his presentation was that social media isn't real, which means that a lot of posts and photos that we see from “influencers”, for instance, are often manipulated the way that the poster likes. Social media allows people to create their own version of themselves that other users will see, and isn't necessarily an accurate representation of who that person really is in real life. In my opinion, it just means that you should take what you see online with a grain of salt, and don't always believe what you see. 

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Then and Now

Hi everyone, welcome to my first post! I am a senior at Central Michigan University and I’m majoring in accounting. I grew up in Grand Ledge, Michigan, and my career goals include attaining my CPA certification and hopefully working in private accounting. With this blog, I hope to work on my social media skills and the way I present myself online, and allow it to connect me to other people in a professional manner.